They need community based rehabilitation: Experts
Srinagar, Nov 2: When a counsellor tried art therapy to elicit the reasons of misbehaviour by Aijaz, a fourth grade student in a Public School in Srinagar, and asked him to draw sketch on paper, its leitmotif was not indiscernible. Aijaz sketched a house with two colors equally painted in red and green with two flags of India and Pakistan posted atop.
Aijaz’s mindset reflects the way orphans grow in a residential care. His recurrent misbehaviour in the school frightened other children which forced the school authorities to expel him despite a couple of therapies which the school management arranged to redeem him. Aijaz was orphaned four years back and is one of the victims of low intensity conflict in Kashmir whose number hovers between 20,000 to 1,00000. Thousands of single parent orphans of Kashmir strive in their own way to survive. Majority of them struggle for fending themselves and their dependents. Those who are lucky manage to gain entry in orphanages and secure their ‘physical’ survival. However, beyond the four walls of orphanages, they end up misfits like Aijaz in a normal Public School. In absence of the State coming forward to create a safety net for them, the sense of assisting them inflates in civil society which has led to mushrooming of orphanages in Kashmir. That the children in orphanages grow up as non-resilient adult is not only evidenced by a counselor from an international non Governmental Organization working in Kashmir in the area of mental health, but also through other researches. The counselor was requested by a private school to counsel Aijaz and suggest correctional measures to discipline him in the school. “He was rude and undisciplined. He quarreled and misbehaved with everybody in the school. In the art therapy session, he showed extremely negative and mixed feelings. When asked to draw the picture he sketched what he called “gin” a dangerous demon who was his favourite because it frightened other children. In another session, he sketched a house partly painted red and green. The red for him was the blood and the green was peace. There were two flags atop the house one of India and one of Pakistan”, the counselor told Greater Kashmir wishing not to be named. Recurrent indiscipline which the orphan frequently showed in the school led to his expulsion from the rolls. In an independent unpublished study conducted by a Freelance Researcher in association with Department of Social Work, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh and Awaan Society (J&K), it was revealed that the institutional rehabilitation of orphans fails to bring the desired results. Based on the random sampling of the orphans who passed out from different orphanages, the study followed a sample of orphanage pass-outs from various such institutions, chosen randomly and revealed that 90 percent of them fail to clear 12th class examination and three percent of the representatives complete graduation, three percent of them are in government services and 90 percent of the those who are in government services are in Police services. The study also refers to the economics of the orphanages and cites the research conducted by Chris Desmond (2002) where the institutional care of orphans in the west is estimated up to 12 times the per capita cost of community based care options. The idea of looking for the alternatives to the orphanages is even influencing the trustees of J&K Yateem Trust (JKYT), a local Non-Governmental Organization which started the first orphanage in Kashmir in 1972 and runs six out of 34 orphanages in Kashmir. A R Hanjoora who is the General Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Trust, believes that residential care is not the answer to the problems of the orphans. “In the last annual meet of the trust, I emphasized the need to move ahead with the time and find out the way to rehabilitate the orphans in their own villages,” Hanjoora told Greater Kashmir. However, he found no takers of his point. “The organization needs to be manned with young development practitioners rather than leaving it in the hands of people who do not have specific expertise. We need to study the worldwide trends in the area of children with inadequate parental care and contextualize that with the orphans of Kashmir,” he added. Hanjoora does not believe in restructuring the orphanages. He advocates for non-institutional means of rehabilitation via the village based mechanisms for which he has even filed a Public Interest Litigation in J&K High Court against the Ministry of Social Justice, with Jammu and Kashmir Government as one of the respondents. “I’m not in favour of orphanages, but as far as rehabilitation is concerned we must use all these techniques to involve the community,” he added. Clinical psychologists like Dr Muzaffar Khan, have their own reasons to advocate for radical changes for mainstreaming the orphans. “It is a proven fact that abused children are likely to end up abusers and abuse their own children. In the orphanages these things are not taken care of there is no system in place which would address such issues of orphans,” Dr Khan said. . Most of the orphans in Kashmir are the direct victims of violence and the orphanages do not offer specialized service of care and protection so as to help them to come out of such tendency. Invariably the Kashmir orphanages employ local people to take care of the orphans. They are neither trained in child care nor in management of the residential houses which is a major reason for lack of standards of care in orphanages. Recently in an art competition most of them sketched the guns and the destruction Kashmir is witnessing over the past 20 years. “Rehabilitation at the mental level is more important than offering them a room to live in, delicious food to relish and a colour television to watch,” says Dr Muzafar. Iqbal Lone, a Srinagar based development practitioner offers an alternative to residential care and the village based rehabilitation. The social worker proposes a midway to the existing conditions in orphanages and the global trend of having a village based rehabilitation system in place. “We need to regulate the orphanages at first place. I believe that orphanages could do better if there are minimum standards of care applicable to all of them. It is the responsibility of Government to collaborate with the organizations which have experience in the field and come up with a regulatory mechanism which should bring minimum standards of care as guidelines for running orphanages. Every orphanage should comply with these standards failing which their license to run the orphanage might be reconsidered and even cancelled in some cases,” Lone said. “There are four important guidelines given in United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child, endorsed by India in 1992 which need to be linked with orphanages for ensuring special care to them. Child participation, best interest of the child, non-discrimination and survival and development, most of them are absent in our slipshod orphanages,” he added. A bottom-line to the plight of orphans in Jammu and Kashmir is highlighted in a report by Seeta Sharma, who conducted a study last winter on orphans of Kashmir laments “where is the government?” “When it comes of dealing with the issue of orphans the state is largely silent whether in terms of policy or program. The condition of the state run houses is extremely bad. There are no significant packages for orphans. The government of Jammu and Kashmir has actually never listed it as a problem which is the worst part of it,” the research states. Kashmir orphans continue to think about the dual loyalties. Like Aijaz most of them will sketch a house with the flags of India and Pakistan atop reflecting a misdemeanor of their nurturing. Only a radical welfare policy will bail the hapless orphan out from the deep misgivings they encounter whether they are in an orphanage or begging in their villages.
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